


I miss you more than I remember you...

by AgentCoop



Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Angst, Ash Lynx and Okumura Eiji Go to Japan, Canon Compliant, Cemetery, Death, Grief/Mourning, In the most metaphorical sense ever, Love Letters, M/M, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:22:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22703140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgentCoop/pseuds/AgentCoop
Summary: It's been six years since Ash's death, and Eiji still remembers.Every anniversary, he sweeps off the grave.Sits down beside it.And begins a story of Izumo...
Relationships: Ash Lynx & Okumura Eiji, Ash Lynx/Okumura Eiji
Comments: 16
Kudos: 87





	I miss you more than I remember you...

**Author's Note:**

> Well...Happy Valentine's Day? 
> 
> I chose February 13th as the day of Ash's burial in another fic I'm working on, so it seemed apropos to use it here. Thank you for reading <3

The ground is hard under Eiji’s feet–that frozen kind of hardness, where he can feel every bump and dip, even through the thick soles of his boots. He tries not to think about it too much, just keeps walking the path.

It’s February 13th again.

Again.

Again.

This is the sixth anniversary, and it weighs even heavier than the last five.

The first was cold, wind biting, snow blowing all around them. There were people that time–too many of them. Too much grief for one small space.

The second was warmer than usual. Eiji only wore a sweater. He remembers it because he used the sleeve to rub at a spot near the inscription of the gravestone that didn’t quite shine like the rest.

The next three were covered in snow. The roads were a mess, the schools were closed, there was almost nobody out in the town at all. The paths at the cemetery were always kept up though, so perfectly cleaned by the maintenance crew that Eiji had no problem walking out to the right line, to the right row, to the right hole in his heart.

And now he is here again.

Today, there is no snow, but it is frozen–that bitter cold wind biting at his cheeks and nose, cutting straight through his dark black coat. He’s used to this in New York, the way the wind seems to cut a path straight between the buildings, buffeting any people who dare to set foot in its path.

It’s different in Massachusetts though. They aren’t right on the ocean–Eiji can’t even see a glimpse of the flickering blue on the horizon, but he’s close enough to smell it. The salt. The brine. The freedom.

Sometimes he wonders how impossibly difficult it must have been for Ash to come from _this_ to the dank, stale air in the city. How much he lost.

But then Eiji remembers that Ash liked this sort of internal turmoil. It may have been punishment. It may have been banishment. But both amounted to the same thing in the end.

Loneliness.

The grass is wilted and brown, exposed by one day of sunshine and warmth, then frozen back into something dead. There’s nothing the groundskeepers can do during February to make the graveyard look like a welcoming place, and Eiji finds he doesn’t mind.

He knows all too well how fatal beautiful things are.

Blinking, he finally stops in front of the small plot. There’s a stone for Ash’s mother.

And a stone for Ash.

There are two tiny pots placed on each, a tiny little Charlie Brown style Christmas tree poking out of each. They are over a month old and are now wilting with their little glittering ornament balls hanging almost to the earth, but Eiji smiles. Then he kneels down and begins dusting off the stones, carefully moving the tiny trees back to the grass.

Later, he will bring them with him to the entrance of the cemetery and throw them in the trash. Eiji and Ash’s father seem to be in a perpetual state of missing each other, but there is an invisible agreement between the two of them–whoever visits the graves, brings new flowers and clears the old.

Jim Callenreese and Okumura Eiji both come from different worlds, but the pain of grief is universal.

Once he’s cleaned everything up as best he can, he shrugs off his backpack and kneels, reaching in and bringing out two identical teddy bears. They are garrish and cheap–the sort of bears you find in every Hallmark store of America in the month before Valentines Day.

In fact, Eiji did find them in a Hallmark, a month before Valentines Day.

Each holds a tiny vase in one fluffy paw, and a tiny red heart pillow in the other that says _I Love You_ in white cursive embroidery.

Eiji reaches back into his bag and pulls out the two fabric roses he’d bought at the same Hallmark, deftly tucks one into each vase, and then puts the bears at the corner of each gravestone.

If he looks out, over the rest of the yard, he can see hundreds of similar items. Bears, baubles, vases filled with fabric flowers–because in the dire cold winter months, anything alive in a graveyard bleeds it’s color into the dirt.

He pushes the bear on Ash’s mother’s stone just a little further to the right, studies them both, then finally sighs in relief.

One thing.

Check the box.

Cross it off the list.

Done.

Done.

To his right, one of the groundskeepers is laying down salt on all the paths. He looks up just in time to catch Eiji’s eyes, and waves.

“Big storm coming tonight,” he says, voice cheery, smile cocked on his face.

“Yep,” Eiji returns.

“S’posed to get eleven inches!”

“That is what they say.”

“Real big storm,” the man repeats, then waves again, moving down the path, salt skittering against the pavement, following every step he takes.

Eiji looks back down. He’s got a blanket rolled up inside his backpack, and he reaches for it, spreading it out on the frozen ground beneath him before sitting down–knees drawn up, arms reaching around them.

“Six years,” he says.

His voice is lonely, and the wind picks it up quickly, carrying it past Eiji’s ears and out amongst the tombstones.

The only sound he hears in response is his own breathing.

“Sing is doing really great,” Eiji continues. “He’s still in school, but he just bought a building downtown where he’s starting some sort of trading company. I don’t know the details, it’s beyond me, but he’s doing really, really well.”

"I haven’t talked to Max in a while–last I heard, Michael was getting ready to graduate highschool, and Max was working more and more in the local city government. Pretty soon he’ll be too big-time for either of us.” Eiji laughs a little at that, still unable to picture Max doing anything serious at all.

The laugh falls short, clattering back to the frozen grass. “Honestly, I’ve lost touch with most people. Sing checks up on me still. It’s getting annoying, but...I don’t know. Some days…” his voice fades, and he has to swallow a few times around the choking sadness that’s clogging his throat.

“Some days…”

Eiji presses the heels of his hands to his eyes, and draws in a shuddering breath.

“I don’t know, Ash. I’m tired. I’m really, really tired. I spent so long being just…pissed off at you. And then I was just angry at myself. And all that turned to just...fuck.”

He’s crying now, and he can’t stop it, so he just contents himself with rubbing at his eyes and wiping his nose against the back of his hand. “I’m trying,” he chokes out. “I’m just tired.”

Somewhere far away, beyond the gates of the cemetery, a dog starts to bark. It’s a loping, hollow sound that goes on and on and on, until finally it cuts short again with a loud yip.

Eiji turns his head towards it, looking to see if anyone else is around. The groundskeeper with the salt is gone now, and the twilight has set in just enough that it’s triggered the lights from the building, and the streetlamps that line the fence.

It’s so quiet now, that he almost imagines he’s not real at all. That if he just closes his eyes, he can fade away too.

Become another echo.

Slowly, he lies down on the blanket, trying not to break the fragile silence that’s thick with promise. Eiji brings his knees up to his chest just enough that he’s almost cradling the shining granite stone, and reaches a finger out, tracing the looping calligraphy on it.

Aslan Jade Callenreese

Aslan Jade Callenreese

Aslan Jade Callenreese

He doesn’t touch the date. That’s still too deep a wound. Just the name, following the engraved path of the cut again and again, like he’s trying to press his own flesh into it, trying to leave the stone with a memory of being human.

“I miss you,” he whispers–so quiet he’s not even sure he said it out loud at all.

_I’m terrified I’ll never stop missing you_ , he thinks. _I’m scared that this is it. That there’s nothing else out there. That you were everything, that without you...I am lost._

“I miss you,” he says again, louder this time.

The wind bites at his ears, and Eiji pauses to pull his hat down, further over the top of them.

“I miss you.” Then, clearing his throat, and pressing the palm of his hand against the stone, he starts.

“There’s a seagull up ahead that keeps cawing at us. You’re eating a sandwich–peanut butter and jelly because you still won’t actually try anything I cook for you. The bird is obnoxious. You keep kicking at him and I keep telling you to stop, that he’s just trying to eat, that he’s just trying to live."

"The bird doesn’t give up, but eventually it doesn’t matter. We are standing on the ocean, our toes bare, wriggling in the sand. It’s cold. _It’s the same cold in New York_ , you say, and I laugh, because it is."

"The ocean smells just as briny, just as salty. The wind whips off of it, cold and unceasing. And you can see every color of blue in the world if you just look hard enough. _This is Izumo, Ash,_ I say. _This is where I grew up.”_

Eiji goes on, the sky darkening to night all around him, his voice going from clear, to husky, to barely present.

He describes the water. The town. The streets. The people.

He describes the air around them. The smell of rice and wisteria. The taste of soba. The sound of a single Shamisen.

He creates Izumo for one single night, and when he closes his eyes, he can almost feel Ash’s hand in his.

Eventually, Eiji opens his eyes.

HIs lashes have almost frozen together, and he’s thankful for the tiny heat sachets he’d put in every pocket of his clothing earlier. He tries to shake off the cold, and it hurts.

It always hurts at first, remembering that he has to live.

He packs everything back up. Shrugs his backpack on. Stands once more.

“I love you,” he says, voice hoarse from use.

The little bears smile back, tiny beaded eyes reflecting the streetlamp behind him.

Eiji nods at them once, then turns and walks down the shiny black path, the crunch of salt beneath his boots.

Quietly, with almost no sound at all, the snow starts to fall.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on Twitter:  
> [Coop](twitter.com/agentcoop1)  
> 


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